The Merry Widow Waltz Is Everywhere

...heard here in a dance hall version from 1928...one can imagine Gatsby and Daisy twirling about in a moonlit garden:

...inevitably, conceived as a ballet:

...here, as it might have been heard in a gilded ballroom on the Titanic (the sinking in 1912 of that "latest marvel of Western technology" has, in retrospect, been seen a potent augury for the "sinking" of Western culture itself two years later, in 1914):

...a lush kaleidoscope from the Lubitsch film:

...sung by the Three Tenors:

...yes, everywhere! A huge international success directly following its premiere in 1905 and forever more: